HttpClient Features

http://hc.apache.org/httpclient-3.x/

• Standards based, pure Java, implementation of HTTP versions 1.0 and 1.1
• Full implementation of all HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS, and TRACE) in an extensible OO framework.
• Supports encryption with HTTPS (HTTP over SSL) protocol.
• Granular non-standards configuration and tracking.
• Transparent connections through HTTP proxies.
• Tunneled HTTPS connections through HTTP proxies, via the CONNECT method.
• Transparent connections through SOCKS proxies (version 4 & 5) using native Java socket support.
• Authentication using Basic, Digest and the encrypting NTLM (NT Lan Manager) methods.
• Plug-in mechanism for custom authentication methods.
• Multi-Part form POST for uploading large files.
• Pluggable secure sockets implementations, making it easier to use third party solutions
• Connection management support for use in multi-threaded applications. Supports setting the maximum total connections as well as the maximum connections per host. Detects and closes stale connections.
• Automatic Cookie handling for reading Set-Cookie: headers from the server and sending them back out in a Cookie: header when appropriate.
• Plug-in mechanism for custom cookie policies.
• Request output streams to avoid buffering any content body by streaming directly to the socket to the server.
• Response input streams to efficiently read the response body by streaming directly from the socket to the server.
• Persistent connections using KeepAlive in HTTP/1.0 and persistance in HTTP/1.1
• Direct access to the response code and headers sent by the server.
• The ability to set connection timeouts.
• HttpMethods implement the Command Pattern to allow for parallel requests and efficient re-use of connections.
• Source code is freely available under the Apache Software License.